This invention relates to an information recording medium having a portion print recorded with a tone signal as a code image to be converted into the tone signal in which a predetermined information including a single of a numeral, character or various symbol or its combination is used as a dial signal of a telephone set and the converted tone signal can be optically read and an information transmission method using the information recording medium.
Heretofore, there has been known a catalog mail order selling in which an originator (orderer) orders to purchase a desired commodity to a recipient (order acceptor) by referring a commodity catalog describing and displaying a photograph and a description of many types of various commodities. In such a catalog mail order selling, transmission of order instruction from the originator to the acceptor has solely been executed by a mailing method. However, in the mailing method, the originator must fill out a predetermined form sheet with information such as a commodity number, etc. to be ordered at each time in the case of ordering. Accordingly, its ordering work is troublesome. If the number of commodities to be ordered is increased, there are inconveniences of easy occurrence of fill-out mistakes as much.
Recently, there appears a mail order selling ordering and accepting system which utilizes a telephone, a facsimile or so-called a personal computer communication, etc. to eliminate the above-mentioned inconveniences. However, there is still a room for improving certainty at the time of transmitting an order instruction from an originator to an order acceptor or operational easiness, etc. of an apparatus.
On the other hand, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 6-78084, there is known a catalog mail order selling ordering and accepting system in which a bar code capable of being optically read corresponding to a commodity number for designating a commodity is print recorded together with each commodity on a commodity catalog and an originator makes a predetermined reader read the bar code to thereby transmit an order designation from the originator to the order acceptor. That is, the originator makes the predetermined reader optically read the bar code corresponding to a desired commodity from a commodity group described on the commodity catalog, recovers the original commodity number by the reader, further converts the recovered commodity number into a tone signal having a combination of two sound frequencies of a high group (1209 Hz, 1336 Hz and 1477 Hz) and a low group (697 Hz, 770 Hz, 852 Hz and 941 Hz) used at the time of transmitting the telephone number to an exchange by a converter, and then transmits the tone signal to the recipient through a telephone channel. And, the recipient obtains the original commodity number from the received tone signal, specifies the commodity corresponding to the commodity number, and sends the specified commodity.
According to such a system, as a result of improving the certainty at the time of transmitting the order instruction and the operational easiness, the commodity ordering and order accepting work can be further easily executed and contribute to spread of the catalog main order selling.
However, in the catalog mail order selling ordering and order accepting system using the above-mentioned bar code, a recording capacity of the bar code itself is fundamentally small. Hence, it is substantially impossible to directly record the sound signal. And, the telephone number or the commodity number cannot be directly recorded in the form of the tone signal on a form sheet surface. Therefore, the originator further needs a converting device for converting data corresponding to the telephone number or the commodity number read out from the bar code into the above-mentioned tone signal.
The inventors of the present invention have had various discussions by obtaining fundamental knowledge that the ordering work can be extremely efficiently and effectively executed if the sound signal can be directly print recorded in the form capable of being optically read on a printing medium such as a form sheet because of a predetermined limit in the catalog mail order selling ordering and order accepting system of this type utilizing the conventional bar code to further improve the system, and has completed the present invention.